


saying, come and see

by samarqand



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Years of the Trees, eldritch valar, mention of Melkor, mention of Vaire, mention of Yavanna, monastic Vanyar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarqand/pseuds/samarqand
Summary: He ought to have asked Ñolofinwë, before antipathy and aspersions kept him from his uncle, if the Valar were perfect. Because he could almost swear they wear masks. Gilded, glorious to behold, but cracking.The peace of Valinor is poisoned; Three Wise Valar arrive bearing gifts.Written for theTolkien Secret Santa 2020.
Relationships: Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 29
Kudos: 27
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2020





	saying, come and see

**Author's Note:**

> Merry happy! I hope you enjoy this fic; I'm honored to write for you!
> 
> The "now" timeline for this fic is Y.T. 1470 or 1475. I was going for an especially monastic bent for the group of Vanyar mentioned in this fic, given their canonical devotion to the Valar; hope it's not too jarring!

**THEN**

Maitimo remembers Beleriand.

Beleriand was dim and gauzy, muted and small. 

Shove aside Findekáno’s mess of bedding, Írissë’s whittled deer figures, and he could achieve the mysterious dim of the East that their grandfather described.

“Put the sheets over your head. Not all of them, don’t need suffocating; just -- there, you see.”

The light flooded in to interrupt only when Maitimo, too tall even before his majority, accidentally kicked up the sheet. With the sheet enveloping him and little Findekáno, the shadows of the sloughing trees outside would spindle and drag over them like seeking arms -- reaching to grab them away.

That was Beleriand.

Ensconced in their own manufactured gloom, Maitimo and Findekáno imbibed the dark with conspiratorial glances. “The dangers were ceaseless.” Maitimo gave his grandest impression of the elders of Tirion -- of their Grandfather -- and the strange tales. “How we struggled as westward we gave chase, pursuing the Light. How desperate the times then.” 

“How do you know?” Findekáno, bright for his young age, broke into a nervous smile at the thought. _Desperate._ That word. “You weren’t there, nor were our fathers.”

“I just know,” Maitimo dismissed.

“And Grandfather Finwë speaks little of it,” Findekáno added, a troubled afterthought.

“The memory disturbs him,” Maitimo said.

“Why?”

“Because,” Maitimo began, unsure of how to continue.

Because a limned, fiery girdle caged in the peace of Eldamar and kept it free of horror. And inside this cage, there was no vocabulary to describe the haunted corners where Eldar were transfigured by the Darkness, their jaws shattered and their speech spoiled into another tongue entirely.

“Because,” Maitimo finished.

No one was perfect, even in Eldamar. Grandfather’s stories were imperfect, a glimpse into a wretched world. He would narrate his own history in vague words: pretty, but approximate. The numbers were all wrong: how many were supposed to have started along the great journey West, and how many are here now, drifting along the pristine pathways of Tirion. 

The story changed a little each time told: Cuiviénen, and then a stretch of journey where the Eldar first showed their mettle. 

Or, Cuiviénen, and then dark times where there shone Light at the end; there always is. 

Or, Cuiviénen, and then how mighty were the Valar, how grateful the Eldar.

And no one looked out the windows to see for themselves. It didn’t happen here, after all; nothing to see. It was all the way over there.

When he’d at times help his father melt down neglected necklaces and circlets to cast into forbidding shapes, Maitimo would recite his uncle’s adages and stories to himself to ease the monotony.

Craftwork in the House of Curufinwë Fëanáro changed so insidiously that neither he nor his brothers considered seriously what it could portend -- until they had wrought an armory fit for seven sons and more. Creation shifted from holy to hard and ruthless: blades that winked and moued in their ask for ruin; shields churlishly slumped against the wall in their wait to impose. 

The memory of sharing words and warmth with his uncle and cousin refused to change; the accessories did. When he recalled boyhood untroubled by new uncertainties, he could no longer imagine his uncle and father without the swords at their hips -- only ceremonial, the Eldar reassured themselves. 

But that ancient satisfaction of sitting at the foot of Findekáno’s bed by Ñolofinwë’s side, feeling welcome, and knowing he wasn’t the one being made to go to bed yet: that was an impression unadulterated. How he’d nod self-importantly along to his uncle’s bedtime stories, maintaining arrow-straight posture while reminding himself that he shared blood, despite his father’s contentions, with Ñolofinwë.

He could be, with gumption and the right lordly affectation, as bright and true as his uncle.

The worst that could happen to you in Ñolofinwë’s bedtime stories was tumbling into a pond in pursuit of a frog: to splutter up to the surface and find your siblings laughing at you. Findekáno always laughed at the thought of his father flailing among the lily pads and dragging muck out with him like some eerie thing from Beleriand. Sometimes Ñolofinwë would flop and kick on the bed to reenact the moment until Findekáno, howling in laughter, would grapple at him, helping him out of the imaginary mire and restoring him to his might.

And last, Ñolofinwë’s hushed reminder before Findekáno slipped into an unperturbed sleep:

_To keep your dream a little longer, never look to the window when you wake. Lie with the dream, find its pictures upon the dark ceiling. Narrate the dream aloud._

_And then, finally, turn to the window._

And Ñolofinwë would smile, his arm haloing Findekáno’s head as he kissed his nose -- staidly ignoring those final, feeble petitions for another story. Quietly, he’d close the door behind himself and Maitimo.

Once, Maitimo had asked about the dreams, hungry for understanding: “Did Grandf -- did your father, did our King tell -- .” He circled the point awkwardly even as he held himself confidently. Much to prove.

“Did my lord and father, Finwë the King, relate this to me?” Ñolofinwë suggested, buttoned-down and kind. “He did.” He looked thoughtful then, slowing his pace as they approached the parlor where Maitimo’s family waited on them, their noise clamoring against the tranquility. “In our King’s estimation, to relinquish the proud compulsion to know, so that we may instead devote ourselves to carrying forth the peace of dreamtime through our waking hours, is both a privilege and an act of courage.”

And Ñolofinwë smiled a little then -- a little lopsided, so different from his father’s sharp slide of a grin. “What do you think?” he asked, curious.

“I think,” Maitimo answered carefully, “a perspective that assures peace its pride of place is a laudable one.”

And Ñolofinwë smiled again, gladdened -- relieved, perhaps, to hear it.

To look away and trust all is well.

How easy it is, Maitimo thought as he nearly tripped on the silk train of Ñolofinwë’s robe in an effort to stay abreast of his uncle. How easy to march along to the endless Light, to never ask what lies in wait -- waiting to change.

How easy to be as steadfast as Nolofinwe, whose stride spoke certainty.

Maitimo had congratulated himself for his courage back then. He never looked out the windows.

+

And then one day, amid a landscape transforming under inevitability’s command, the promise of peace ceased to be enough.

Findekáno slid into a cowed silence by the end of a tale of the Valar’s awe-inspiring splendor. 

“Be unafraid of the Valar,” Ñolofinwë softly reminded his son.

“Grandfather said Oromë was frightful to look upon back then,” Findekáno mumbled. “Why?”

“That was East,” Ñolofinwë assured him, “another place and time. Gentle and kind now are the Valar’s countenances and their creations. So too are the mechanisms of this world. Their world.” 

A touch to Findekáno’s forehead, to grant sweet dreams. “Rest.”

+

**NOW**

I am not at rest, Maitimo wants to confess to Ñolofinwë.

He ought to have asked Ñolofinwë, before antipathy and aspersions kept him from his uncle, if the Valar were _perfect_.

Because he could almost swear they wear masks. Gilded, glorious to behold, but cracking.

It wasn’t that he wanted to look and see -- he had never wanted to distrust. He hadn’t wanted his father, alight with animosity, to be right.

But sometimes there is a hitch and twitch. All it takes now is a moment: something, amid the joyful merrymaking he’s found himself in now, that startles away the dream. It could be Findekáno pulling at his robe as they weave through the crowds. Or a clatter: a child drops a bracelet on the marble floor.

The seams of Valinor expand, and then contract to a crumple. The masks slip, jilted.

And he glimpses, for a moment, what the Valar might be.

Flanked by a small procession of radiant Vanyar faithful, three Valar surprise the revelers with a visit to the hall. They enter with their fair, rehearsed semblances. The halls become hallowed ground; the Eldar hush in reverence.

Exalted, they spare not one moment’s attention for the few who look askance or smile bitter smiles their way. Perhaps their inattention is a power they wield over the Ñoldor. Perhaps that is why Ñolofinwë’s smooth brow knits as he bows his head in greeting.

The Valar look polished as eggshells where they stretch a head above Maitimo. Before his stunned blink sets the world straight, the three seem to grow where they stand: glaring gem-bright, they sprout like monstrous trees, tall enough to touch the vaulted ceiling. Their faces vanish, unknowable.

A blink: they return, prepossessing as porcelain.

Yavanna’s face glows verdant petal-pink when she slowly tips down, a rain-filled tulip, to greet a gaggle of small elflings with her blossom smile. 

“Her favor upon you,” a Vanyar acolyte behind Yavanna sings to the children.

Stirred by her own idle breeze, Yavanna pours something shimmering into great crystal bowls at the banquet tables. The crowd blooms into pleased murmurs under the ringing hymns of the Vanyar surrounding her.

Maitimo watches as even his father drinks a greedy bowlful of Yavanna’s miruvórë; he emerges giddy and forgetful, levity his kinsmen mirror back to him. 

Tirion is riveted now by the house of Curufinwë Fëanáro’s burgeoning unpredictability. For all the tension, it is nearly intoxicating in its newness. A change, some of the bolder ones say, from the daze the Valar would inflict upon us.

Findekáno skips over to get himself and Maitimo a serving; he nearly bashes into Ñolofinwë on the dash back. 

“I’ve a mind to see you thrown out of here, drunk at the sight of drink alone,” Maitimo grins as he takes a spilling cup.

“Atar,” Findekáno pronounces loudly over Maitimo’s remark, waving Ñolofinwë in, “why does Itarillë make such a fuss around the Valar?”

Maitimo swivels around and regards Itarillë. She’s tiny, tearfully fighting Elenwë's hold with barefoot kicks and her limited vocabulary. Elenwë, dreamy through Itarillë’s struggle, strokes her hair and hums a Vanyarin lullaby. Itarillë orients herself noisily toward the columned threshold: the outdoors just beyond, an escape from the lofty festivities.

“But half a year more, and she would tell us herself, I think,” Ñolofinwë remarks. He says no more; he watches Itarillë with his head slowly, steadily tilting under the weight of some question. Maitimo observes Ñolofinwë observing her, and mimics his uncle: just a small incline of the head. 

He feels noble. Then he sees his father shrewdly scanning the crowds, and stops.

Outdoors -- there she slides away, Yavanna. Unseen when she desires, like a trick of the light and shadow; only a handful of the Vanyarin reverent catch her, following her out to the full flush of silvering Light.

She lifts her susurring skirts to sweep down the marble stairs, down to the meadow. She takes her secrets with her.

Exposed, her feet step lightly as leaves. But --

\-- Not feet.

She lifts her skirts: craggy, tangled brown roots press and writhe damply against the stone, carrying her forth. An earthworm caught in her heaving knots falls out of the mess; it smacks against the pristine stair top. 

Abandoned on the marble, it wriggles violently as she sails down toward the fields.

Findekáno studiously, respectfully turns away from the creature; happiness waits for them within these halls. He sways to the swell of Makalaurë’s music and waits on Maitimo to join him. Maitimo absently sways in time once, twice, before:

“Why do you think Itarillë fusses so when she’s around them?” Maedhros asks, bluntly. Repeating the question like a paean -- could he wear down the mystery of it if he turns it over and buffs away at it enough, could he erode away that apprehensive _unknowingness_ and find some tidy answer inside? Could he.

Findekáno drains his glass, insisting on cheer: “Sure, you’ve never known a baby in your life, Nelyo. You’ve never seen a child in a state for no reason.”

Maitimo snorts. “It’s not to say I don’t envy her command of the room.”

His cousin tsks. “Jealous of a baby! Fie on you, Maitimo -- ."

“Really now.” Maitimo tugs at Findekáno’s braid and meets his gaze.

Findekáno sobers. “My father said sometimes Grandfather could be brought to tears at the sight of the Valar. Perhaps she is of the same make as he. She is gripped by their…” But he must pause to sound through the word, as though he hardly believes himself: “Their grace.”

“My father says the Valar are far too imperious,” Maitimo says, suddenly. “That they have a place as we do, but they have forgotten theirs.”

Findekáno smiles an odd smile. Vexed. “And he would know imperiousness, wouldn’t he.”

Then, after a beat: “I’m sorry.”

Maitimo shakes his head, distracted. Yavanna disappears into a glade; he peers out after her as her form darkens and disperses, her beauty blurring into --

He doesn’t know. Her definition eludes his keen sight, his vocabulary.

The earthworm snaps and seizes on the stairs.

“No,” he excuses Findekáno.

Then, “No one’s perfect,” he excuses his father.

+

Father is gone back to his stones, to confide in them about every suspicion he nurses. He has gone back to the spears and arrows, wondering at weaponry.

The Vanyar lace and knit about the archway where Vairë looks benevolently upon her faithful. “Her favor upon us,” they chirp. “Her favor upon us!”

Time is obsolete -- minutes tallied only in the laughter piling up on the beams and warmth stitching into rich brocaded robes. Findekáno slings an arm around Maitimo’s neck (“Dear prince, ease the trouble from your brow!” he cries over the happy din) and pulls him into a dance to Makalaurë’s music. 

The Vanyar chant along to the beat, harmonizing in honor of Vairë who stands supreme above them. Their voices are piercing. Intricate darts.

Perfection frays. Masks crack. 

He looks to Vairë as she takes her leave. But he doesn’t see a face above the heads of the blissful Eldar. He sees not a face -- where her face should be, nothing but an empty oval. The wide-open eye of a needle.

Watching.

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to abhor goodness, and the Valar are good. Maitimo looks for Ñolofinwë to recall his reassurances. 

But Ñolofinwë has Itarillë crying a zealous "no no no" in his arms, and he strokes her back gently; ever composed, he carries on quiet conversation with a couple of his kin. Pretending nothing is amiss. Everything is perfect.

Someone picks a flower from Yavanna’s living garlands that twist greenly up the walls, wreathing the windows. 

Someone picks a flower, and every wall shudders bodily with the affront. Still the Eldar carry on: bright, tall incisors inside this pulsing creature of a hall.

Findekáno unlocks his arm from Maitimo’s neck. “Were we born swallowed alive or did we miss the moment?” he asks, bemused.

“Father says we at times may see the bars of the cage they’ve wrought.” Maitimo finishes his drink, countervailing the sinking in his gut. “And we ought not look away but mind the truth.”

Findekáno cuffs Maitimo’s jaw, affectionate. “If I wanted to know what your father thought, I’d be hanging off him instead of you, now, wouldn’t I?” He balances his feet atop Maitimo’s, gaining enough height to kiss his lips.

“Am I not my father’s first-born, raised by his hand and under his tutelage?” Maitimo asks abruptly. He casts a look toward Ñolofinwë, and then back to Findekáno. “Do I not love my father as dearly as you love yours?”

“No doubt. And well you should.” Findekáno hops back, still amicable, but -- circumspect, as everyone must be around Curufinwë Fëanáro and his sons nowadays. “Only,” he adds boldly, “there are cages of many different makes vying for us, aren’t there.”

Maitimo doesn’t bother asking for elaboration. He tosses back his long hair like nothing bothers him and everything is perfect, and slips an arm around his cousin with all the confidence he can muster. He doesn’t possess the wisdom and patience of Ñolofinwë. He has not the unswerving good will of Findekáno. He tries; he might even grow in similarity to them yet. But now, caught in the current of ignorant merriment, he is unhewn and restless, pulling his cousin toward one more drink just to keep moving.

Itarillë keeps screaming.

+

Two things happen as the celebrations end and the guests begin departing into the idylls outside.

The first is that the lyre’s tune fades into an alien silence. 

Maitimo and Findekáno look for Makalaurë, a dark head circled loosely by the golden-headed Vanyar who have spent the hours imbibing his notes and improvising vespers to the Valar.

And there is the last Vala now, drawn to that artful control of notes, that effortless command of the Vanyar’s attention. 

Bearing a freshly plucked flower -- Yavanna’s flower -- Melkor glides to the dais with intent. His handsome face is fixed mild, a mist to veil even the most ragged shapes. 

His approach ripples the Vanyar acolytes apart to make way for him; they gaze after him, their smiles wilting. His wrists are still plainly darkened -- scorched like a brand -- where the lightningstrike of manacles once bound him. The markings are memento of long-ago transgressions, but Melkor seems to invite the recognition as his wide sleeves slip to expose him for what he was.

But, there is nothing terrible in Melkor’s countenance. He is no blank eye. He is no mess of matted tuber and root.

Melkor smiles placidly as he inclines down, a gleaming black raven examining a treasure, to offer Makalaurë the flower and a compliment. 

Makalaurë, awed in spite of himself, shifts his lyre to the side and reaches up to accept the flower.

Something in Maitimo rouses and he takes a quick step forward. He feels Findekáno abreast of him; in tandem, they move toward the dais in a compulsion to be near and to be ready. 

No reason. It doesn’t make sense.

“His favor upon you,” Makalaurë’s Vanyarin audience hushes. “His favor upon you.”

Before Maitimo and Findekáno can reach the dais, Ñolofinwë has arrived at Makalaurë’s side, unruffled as though he intuits no trouble. He requests a song, graciously tucking the gifted flower into his collar so his nephew might keep his hands free. Makalaurë begins happily at Ñolofinwë’s behest. 

They halt, drifting amid the ebbing throngs. Findekáno hums. Maitimo crosses his arms. They look at each other: uncertain, as if waking from a doze, that they’d ever had reason to worry. Lacking the vocabulary to explain.

“Why not join me at my father’s house this evening,” Findekáno suggests abruptly. “My father would grant it. You and Makalaurë both.”

There’s a dare in Maitimo’s smile. “I understand your want of a sound sparring partner, but I warn you that Makalaurë and I make no special allowances just for the word ‘cousin.’”

Now Findekáno looks properly frustrated, raising his hands. “Will you forget about the -- .” He pauses to pat his hands down firmly upon Maitimo’s shoulders, as though ready to shake him awake. “ -- The changes.”

“The way in which -- ,” Maitimo begins.

“ -- Things around us are going odd. Yes,” Findekáno finishes for them both. “Tonight,” he continues, “can it simply be that I love you, and that I am leaping for this rare chance at your company? Say it is my folly, Nelyo. I can take it.” And he smiles brightly then. “No, I will not raise a blade against you; I am sick of sparring. I _would_ sit with you back home and share another drink, if you can manage one more.”

Maitimo laughs and covers his cousin’s hands with his own. New calluses on their fingers turn old gestures unexpected. And yet, it is good to keep company like this again; it is right to affirm their bonds.

Ñolofinwë would say so.

Curufinwë would speak of cages.

Findekáno keeps on: “Come, let us together humor my father’s nostalgia.” A sidelong look as he assesses whether he’s yet tipped Maitimo toward acquiescence. “Do you recognize this song he asked for?”

Yes. Something Ñolofinwë would sing once upon a time, when he needed to soothe the squawking rabble he and his cousins made. A wistful lullaby in serene language, a song for Eldamar’s serene life. How does it go? Yes, it is beautiful, and it goes --

\-- He doesn’t let himself recall.

They join Ñolofinwë where he stands near Makalaurë’s playing. He sings softly down to Itarillë, even while his face has grown as grave as the sword at his hip.

Ceremonial only. No portent.

And when Findekáno rests his elbow on Ñolofinwë’s shoulder and joins in singing, too, Maitimo thinks he could do it. He could leave the sheen of blades and the biting spearpoint at home for just a spell: he could go instead to the House of Ñolofinwë and sit with the family that his father so detests, and laugh over easier times. Talk of faith and trust and the erstwhile years they spent happy. 

He could even go along pretending that tonight’s festivities did not leave him swallowing dry apprehension, looking to the windows.

What a benediction, yes, that Yavanna’s garlands usurped the walls and that she filled our cups with the nectar of oblivion.

How magnanimous of Vairë to drape inconsolable Itarillë in such a fine little indigo blanket that the child finally froze silent, staring.

How splendid that Melkor so appreciated the music, so delighted in mingling among us -- .

Maitimo looks out the window.

While Findekáno draws in close to his father to grinningly relate some anecdote, Maitimo takes Itarillë from his uncle and asks her, “How about a gander outside?”

“Yes,” Itarillë sniffles, kicking her bare feet free of her new blanket as Maitimo cradles her close.

Just at the yawning doors, the worm. It basks in the threshold as though watching over the revels. Itarillë points at it and it jerks, lively again and squirming away from the West.

The West: holy land, sanctified in green and gold. There, where the Valar take apart their shining semblances once they’ve glutted themselves on Eldarin adulation. What they become when they return toward the splendor of Taniquetil, he doesn’t know.

He turns his back on them. The worm is pointing toward the East, as if beckoning for him to come and see.

So he faces the East, where his father says there be monsters. Strange and awful forces waiting to be named.

And maybe they are terrifying. But at least they don’t pretend.

He squares his shoulders where he stands upon the stairs, regarding the expanse. And he blinks and suddenly notices him: the grand stature, the smooth stride marking him as Vala, dark and shining as an ink message scratching across the land. 

Melkor, departing toward the unknown East. 

Melkor’s glide slows; he knows he is watched; he knows by whom. 

He turns back toward Maitimo. He smiles.

Itarillë makes a tearful noise and kicks as if to run away. Maitimo looks down at her.

“His favor upon you,” Itarillë says.


End file.
